They Came to Buy My Sister, So I Went in Her Place as a Boy novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: The Bell
The letter said four lines, and Aitor could not read them.
He stood at my kitchen door with his boot half laced and the black seal broken in his fingers.
He held the page out to me without a word.
I read it aloud.
*The house of Urrutia has no quarrel with the house of Larrea.*
*My father is dead of his lungs since Easter and I speak for the name.*
*I ask the Bear to meet me under the oak at Santa Grazi on the first Sunday of April, and bring the girl, and bring no knife.*
*I will bring none.*
It was signed with the young man's name, which I will not write, because he asked me not to.
Aitor sat down on the bench.
He put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.
I stood behind him and put mine in his hair.
"Twenty years," he said, into his palms.
"It would not have happened if I had burned the book."
"No," I said.
"I would have had a seat and a lie."
"You would.
"And I'd have had to leave you, because I do not stay with men who burn things."
He took a long breath.
I felt it go out of him.
On the first Sunday of April we went to the oak, he and I.
I rode the black mare for the first time, because he had said she would carry me, and she did.
The meadow was green.
The old oak had come into small bronze leaf, each one folded like a fist.
The ring of stones was empty but for the old priest, on the oldest stone, with a missal on his knee.
On the road below, a man in brown rode up alone.
He got down at the meadow gate.
He was a lean young man in a clean coat, with a bandage on his left hand.
He walked into the ring with his hat off and his hands open.
Aitor walked to meet him.
I stayed at the stone with the priest.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of They Came to Buy My Sister, So I Went in Her Place as a Boy are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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